The claims of this patent are hereby dedicated to the public on Apr. 25, 2006.
The present invention relates to disposible organizers or programmable racks useful in organizing a personal television presentation schedule, without limitation thereto, and a system for assembling or making the same.
In the past, prior to the days of home television, radio was a popular home entertainment. Radio programs were published daily in the local daily news paper. There were relatively few radio stations in a given area and in some areas there were sometimes only one or two radio stations receivable on radio appliances sold in the stores. Radio programs were seldom repeated since most radio was live broadcasting. If a particular radio broadcast were aired at a time which was inconvenient to a person that person usually missed the presentation. Except for music, much of which was pre-recorded and played over the air, "electrical-transcriptions", as they were referred to, were not too often used.
With the advent of home television broadcasting there were again only a very limited number of television broadcasting stations in a particular area and, for the most part television broadcast programs were relatively simple. Again, if a certain television presentation were aired at an inconvenient time to an individual the presentation was usually missed by such individual unless the program was repeated or replayed at some other time which was more convenient to the particular individual.
Unlike radio, which was not widely cablized, cable television was introduced to the general public and a great number of broadcasting stations, popularly referred to as channels, were made available to the public throughout the country.
With the great increase in the number of channels available for viewing in almost all parts of the country, with the strong competition among the television channels for "capturing the audience", and television broadcasting around the clock, television stations began repeating presentations, especially popular events and movies shown over television so as to make presentation of such event or popular movies at different, more convenient hours of the day and days of the week. For example, the same television presentation may be shown on several different channels, each showing at a different hour of the day and some showings on the same day of the week while other showings are on different days of the week.
This made daily television programs a complex program to present to the public. Television program guides covering an entire month were published but since these too were based on a daily presentation it was difficult to determine when repeat or replayed presentations were scheduled to be aired.
My copending patent application Ser. No. 078,119, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,815,225 filed July 27, 1987, now Patent Date: Mar. 28, 1989 entitled Programming Device teaches a programmable calender in which stamps identifying television presentations are stored in storage pockets of a transparent sheet. The transparent sheet is a flip sheet located between mirror images of a calander. Rather than present a program on a daily basis a panel of cut-out or tear-out stamps is provided with the stamp clearly identifying the presentation, such as a movie, sports event or other presentation on one side of the stamp and the schedule or times the presentation, in both day and hour, is to be presented and the channel or channels over which presentations are to be aired on the other side. By removing the stamp from the panel and placing the stamp in a storage pocket of the transparent sheet corresponding to a date on which the program is to be presented over the air, a person can organize his personal television viewing schedule. By flipping the transparent sheet back and forth both the front and the back of the stamp may be seen against the same day/date indication on the mirror image calender. My said application, although teaching a convenient personal television schedule organizer, teaches a device that is made of several different materials and is relatively expensive to make.